I was experimenting with sunstars with various lenses. The Nikon 85mm f/1.8 AF-D's magnificent 9-bladed diaphragm makes these spectacular 18-pointed stars on the reflections of the sun, while the rounded diaphragm of the 70-300mm VR gave me nothing.

This is the only shot I'm showing from the F5. For this shot, Velvia 50 amplified what little color there was on the hill better than the D3. My exposure information EXIF data is recorded from the Nikon F5 with the Nikon MV-1 Card Reader, and I store those files with the scans I get. Here is the data file for this roll of film.

The D3 automatically corrects for the falloff of the 70-300mm VR, but film doesn't. Thus the corners are a little darker, which is good because it emphasizes the yellow in the center.

I shifted the program by flicking the rear dial a couple of clicks to give me a small aperture (f/16) to keep everything from the foreground weeds to the mountains in focus. Since I was pointed down at 20mm, the vertical lines of the bridge splayed out, so I corrected that with Photoshop's Lens Distortion Filter.

This looks idyllic, but the wind is whipping everything at about 40 knots.

I shifted the program to give me f/8 for better depth-of-field. Since this was in shade, the Nikon's Auto White Balance didn't quite make it warm enough, so I used a curves adjustment layer to add more red. I selected RED from the drop-down that usually says RGB, and simply lifted the middle of the curve.

I used Shade white balance to make everything warm (orange). I shifted the program to give me a smaller aperture to keep both the tree and the falls sharp. I dialed-in -0.7 stops of exposure compensation to keep the bright parts from disappearing.

I used Shade white balance to make everything warm (orange). I dialed-in -0.7 stops of exposure compensation to keep the bright parts from disappearing.

I shot this in JPG + NEF, and preferred the look of the original JPG to the version I could open in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS4. Nikon's software ought to open the NEF to look as good as the JPG, but I can't afford to let Nikon's buggy software drag down my machine, so I have to use other tools since I won't install Nikon software on my computer. I got the best results from Phase One Capture One. Different brands of software open raw files with slightly different colors because they all use different secret formulae to create an image from raw data. Only Nikon's software uses the same formula as the in-camera JPGs use.

Once open in Photoshop, I used a curves adjustment layer mask to burn (darken) the big rock on the left, which was distractingly bright.

I snapped this as we gathered for dinner on the patio of the Lucia Lodge Restaurant. The sun was already down past the clouds, thus when I fired and shot, the D3 automatically bumped the ISO to 400 to maintain my 1/30 set minimum shutter speed. This of course is perfect with the 70-300 VR, since I easily can hand-hold it for great result at 1/30, and the D3 is perfectly clean at ISO 400. Bingo! These colors as they came out of the D3, in VIVID Picture Control set to +3 saturation, as are all these snaps.

We had dinner, finished at 9:45PM, and didn't get to our rooms and hit the sack in San Simeon until 11PM.